The past few days have been very frustrating. The symptoms:

• my house is spotless, all laundry is done
• inboxes – both physical and virtual – are cleared
• tasks for the next three months are neatly scheduled
• feed reader is cleared of unread and flagged items
• physical and virtual desktops are clean and organised

But no matter what I do, I can’t seem to concentrate on code for long enough to actually do anything. Things that should be easy are not. Things I thought were obvious seem fraught with difficulty. Complication lurks in every conditional.

This has happened before. I don’t think my zen-like state of Getting Things Done is the cause of my lack of code focus – I think it’s a symptom. In the absence of any real work, I’m seeking refuge in structured procrastination.

I’m sure I’m not the only one that experiences this. So, what do you do when your coding brain goes on holiday? How to do you get your code mojo back?